Page:Wilhelm Liebknecht - No Compromises No Political Trading (1900).pdf/59

 the entrance of a socialist into a bourgeois government.

Now, as to the second question: The question of unity and agreement. The answer is dictated to me by the interests and principles of the party. I am for the unity of the party,—for the national and international unity of the party. But it must be a unity of socialism and socialists. The unity with opponents,—with people who have other aims and other interests, is no socialist unity. We must strive for unity at any price and with all sacrifices. But while we are uniting and organizing, we must rid ourselves of all foreign and antagonistic elements. What would one say of a general who in the enemy's country sought to fill the ranks of his army with recruits from the ranks of the enemy? Would that not be the height of foolishness? Very well, to take into our army,—which is an army for the class struggle and the class war,—opponents, soldiers with aims and interests entirely opposite to our own,—that would be madness, that would be suicide.

''On the ground of the class struggle we are invincible; if we leave it we are lost, because we are no longer socialists. The strength and power of socialism rests in the fact that we are leading a class struggle;'' that the laboring class is exploited and oppressed by the capitalist class, and that within capitalist society effectual reforms, which will put an end to class government and class exploitation, are impossible.

We cannot traffic in our principles, we can make no compromise, no agreement with the ruling system. We must break with the ruling system and fight it to a finish. It must fall that socialism may rise, and we certainly cannot expect from the ruling class that it will give to itself and its domination the death blow. The International Workingmen's Association accordingly preached that "The emancipation of the